We all have an individual view of the world. This is shaped both by the history of our ancestors and by our own life experiences and predispositions. And this view (our perception and our thinking) influences our mental state. And our mental state in turn influences our perception and our thinking.
This mutual influence has an effect on various levels - your emotional state, your physical reactions, your conscious thinking and your behaviour. Differences in perception and thinking are known as cognitive bias. These take place automatically and unconsciously and influence how pleasant or unpleasant you perceive situations in your (daily) life.
Perception and thinking involve various mental processes such as attention, interpretation and memory. And all these processes are influenced by cognitive bias. Let's take negative cognitive bias as an example. This plays an important role in depression and anxiety - both in the development and maintenance of depression-like or anxiety-related symptoms.
If you play through negative cognitive bias using the example of the three thought processes, it becomes clear to what extent it influences your mental well-being. In attention processes, someone with a negative cognitive bias pays more attention to negative information than to neutral or positive information. When interpreting, neutral or ambiguous information tends to be evaluated negatively rather than positively. And in memory processes, negative information can be remembered more easily and better than positive information.
How your perspective shapes your experience of everyday situations
These cognitive biases in turn shape your everyday experience of situations. Let's take a dinner with friends as an example. You are sitting at the table with three friends and tell them about a new technology that you have recently discovered on the internet. One of your friends looks grumpy, another smiles and the third friend has a neutral expression on his face. With negative cognitive biases, you will intuitively pay attention to the grumpy looking friend and expect a negative reaction from the neutral looking friend. You may not even notice the third friend's smile or think that it has nothing to do with you.
The perceived negative reaction of your friends (in the form of facial expressions and conclusions that are therefore drawn about the attitudes of others) does not, of course, leave you unaffected. As a result, you may feel insecure or attacked, maybe your heart rate even increases or you become nervous and think something like "they might find what I'm saying boring", "maybe I'm talking too much" or even "I think they think what I'm saying is stupid". As a result, you may stop talking openly and enthusiastically about your discovery and adopt a self-critical or defensive attitude. The whole situation will be perceived by you as rather unpleasant, and you may subsequently have doubts about yourself or your friends.
With a positive cognitive bias, the situation would look different. In this case, you would intuitively pay attention to the friend with a smiling expression and expect a positive attitude or reaction from the neutral-looking friend. You will focus less on your grumpy-looking friend. These perceived positive reactions will put you in a good mood yourself, your posture will become more open, your thoughts may be more focussed on the matter in hand ("I can think of...", "...that could be interesting too") and you will be open to your friend's opinion. The same situation is therefore perceived as empowering and pleasant, the experience of sharing something of yours as positive, your friends as interested and what you say as engaging.
Evolutionary influences on perception and thinking
Our minds have one job - to keep us and our descendants alive. The minds of those who were particularly good at this were the ones that were more likely to survive in earlier times. There has been an evolutionary adaptation of attention to stimuli that are important for survival. We pay more attention to things that could injure or preserve us. "Dangers" such as snakes, spiders or particularly evil-looking faces are perceived more quickly than neutral things; the same applies to pleasurable stimuli (e.g. reproductive stimuli, which the advertising industry makes extensive use of).
All people therefore have cognitive biases for very negative information or information relevant to reproduction. However, this threshold is somewhat lower in anxious people, who perceive even slightly negative information more quickly and easily than neutral information. The same applies to people with depression - slightly negative information is more accessible and present to them than people without symptoms of depression.
How cognitive biases are related to psychological resilience
Resilience means maintaining or regaining mental health despite severe mental or physical stress. Cognitive biases can influence your resilience by the way you evaluate the experiences you have. For example, a habitual slight bias in favour of positive information means that in many situations, the resources available to you are viewed in the same way as their demands. Situations are therefore assessed as a challenge rather than a threat. Situations are dealt with more productively, which has a positive effect on your sense of self-efficacy, among other things. This in turn has a positive long-term effect on your mental health, despite the presence of stress.
So a bit of rose-coloured glasses is good for your resilience. Many people reply here: "What's the point of sugar-coating things if the truth is simply different". My thoughts on this: "The truth" can continue to be recognised as the truth. And in addition to "the truth", the aspect of the functionality of the conclusions or assumptions drawn can be considered. Because does focussing excessively on the "truth" motivate you to change something? Often the strong focus on unpleasant truths makes you feel hopeless and demotivated. Which in turn makes it more difficult to change anything. It's not about making things look good, but rather about focussing on your own resources and making the best of them. In other words, moving away from a problem-orientated focus towards a solution-orientated focus.
Knowing about cognitive biases can help to modify them (also preventively). This starts with recognising whether and to what extent cognitive bias could play a role in your life and then looking at how a change can be brought about. You are welcome to contact me, if you would like support with this.